Motivational Quotes

Humor

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Humor

Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don't get sick you're missing half the fun.

Wilson, Flip

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

James Thurber

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Nelson, Lord

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Mark Twain

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powers.

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

10.

Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side.

Whipple, Edwin P.

11.

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?

Dick Clark

12.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

13.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

14.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

15.

Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.

Diller, Phyllis

16.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

Albee, Edward

17.

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Horace Walpole

18.

Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

King, Florence

19.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

20.

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.

Kathryn L. Nelson

21.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

22.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

23.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

John Kenneth Galbraith

24.

Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.

Kleiser, Grenville

25.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

26.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Carlyle, Thomas

27.

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law.

Clark, Dick

28.

Isn't it sad how some people can't be funny, so they have to settle for being obnoxious?

29.

A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never ceased to be amused.

Maclaine, Shirley

30.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

31.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Martin, Steve

32.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

33.

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

Eva Hoffman

34.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.

Mel Brooks

35.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

Conrad, Joseph

37.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

James Thurber

38.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

39.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

40.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

Hemingway, Ernest

41.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

42.

Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.

Lewis Mumford

43.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people --that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Thurber, James

44.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

45.

Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the ability to enjoy it.

Salma Hayek

46.

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

A. Whitney Brown

47.

Humor -- the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole.

48.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

49.

Humor is, I think, the sublets and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers

Rosten, Leo

50.

An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.

Irving, Washington